Problem-oriented access to clinical literature on acute cardiac ischemia

A knowledge-based system which allows access to results of clinical studies for an individual patient with acute cardiac ischemia is described. The knowledge base contains 20 recent studies applicable to three periods of time in the hospital. An abstract model for the representation of the studies and a facility for consultations have been developed. The inference process includes the determination of a patient-specific decision context and the rule-based application of the studies. The consultation ends with an assorted list of relevant clinical events and their frequencies in groups which are similar to the patient under consideration. The system performed well with retrospective data